


Life

by vailkagami



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Injury, M/M, Retirement, amazingly free of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9351317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: In the wake of an injury, Victor decides he's had enough. And it's okay.





	

Things go wrong in sports. The more taxing something is on the body, the higher the risk of injury. The more worn out the body is from years of wear and tear, the higher the risk of the injury being long lasting, or permanent. It's something every figure skater knows. There is no point in crying about the unfairness of getting hurt now of all times, Victor thinks, even before he hits the ice with a twist of his ankle, and then his knee, that his other leg can't quite absorb. It isn't unfair. He's entered a contract with the ice long ago, in which he agreed that for every jump he ever attempted the pain that shoots through his leg now and sends him sprawling was a price he was willing to pay.

He agreed to this, he thinks over Yûri calling his name and the sound of blades that aren't his scrapping over the ice. He's always known, from the first time he fell as a child, what he was doing.

When Yûri asks him if he is okay, he nods. When Yûri offers a hand, he takes it and leans onto him as Yûri leads him to the edge of the rink where Yakov is wearing his scowl as a mask. “I guess I'm not as young as I used to be,” Victor says, smiling, as he limps over to the bench with their help.

What he means is, 'I guess this is it.'

 

-

 

The injury doesn't have to end Victor's career. Yûri is almost surprised to hear that, a day later in the hospital, from an expert who has helped Victor through more injuries than Yûri expected. He can help him through this one, he says. The season is over for Victor, that much is certain, but with the right treatment and a lot of physical therapy, there is a good chance that Victor's leg will heal enough to carry him through another year or two.

There is no guarantee, however, and Yûri feels queasy inside, nervous even, at the prospect that in the end it might all be in vain and Victor might never again glide across a rink to turn his competition into dust.

Until he sees the hint of a smile on Victor's lips, the relaxed set of his shoulders, and knows that the decision has already been made.

Victor will not try to come back from this one. He is done. And the moment he realizes this, the uneasiness leaves Yûri and a calmness settles over him that he never expected to feel in this moment he has always known was waiting somewhere down the line.

He did not expect it. For years (that feel, perhaps, like all his life) he has dreaded this event, and now that it has come it takes him a long time to understand why he is fine with it. Hours. Perhaps a day.

They are both home when the realization hits, and it does so silently and in the most mundane way possible, somewhere in the background of all the things that matter. Victor, who is not supposed to move around, is standing in the kitchen with his crutches, reading the label on a can with a look of concentration on his face Yûri isn't sure the can deserves. His hair is sticking up because he's been napping, and his striped sweater is wrinkled. He limps over to the refrigerator and starts rummaging through the vegetables and Yûri wants to send him back to the couch before he can hurt himself further, but he does not because the knowledge has just hit him (like a glacier, old and powerful and quiet) that this is his, and it's his to keep.

The existence of Victor the skater was fleeting, and Yûri has always known it. He dreaded its end because for the longest time, that was all of Victor that he had. Victor on the ice, in front of the cameras, in images Yûri had to share with the entire world. Victor as his competitor, whom he had to catch up to because their shared time in competition was short and Yûri had to make it count. Once Victor retired he was to fade from Yûri's life, inevitably, and Yûri has lived his life in helpless anticipation of that loss.

Now Victor is being a careless idiot in their shared kitchen, and in a few days, when he announces the end of his career and the entire world will be in mourning of their greatest skater, Yûri will go home with him to this apartment that they are slowly filling with the signs of life it has been lacking when Yûri first moved in here. They will grab take out on the way back, probably, and will begin to settle into whatever their life is going to be from now on. Victor will continue to be his coach. He will continue to choreograph his programs, and one day, when Yûri's time as a competitive skater is over as well, they will do something else.

Maybe they will stay connected to the ice. Maybe not. Skating has been a part of Yûri's life for so long it's hard to imagine not doing it in one way or another, but then, he never imagined the man whose posters used to cover every centimeter of his bedroom wall to ask him if he wants lettuce or cucumber of his sandwich and warn him that they are out of mustard.

Life is full of surprises. Most of them, surprisingly, are good.

 _'You're gorgeous,'_ he thinks, and almost says, when Victor turns around, waiting for his reply, and that is a surprise, too, in a way. Yûri has been aware of it, of course, but he feels now as if he has never really noticed it before – that the Victor who is making sandwiches on crutches is no less beautiful than the Victor who does a combination spin on the ice. The difference is that this Victor is all Yûri's, and so is the sandwich.

“I want you to move back to the couch before you break something else, and let me handle the food,” he replies, in place of all the things he just thought. “Pick a movie. I'll take care of everything else.”

Victor pouts, but does as he is told. He stops to kiss Yûri on the way out and Yûri, irritated with Victor's recklessness and still reeling from the simple fact that this is happening right now and will continue to happen even though Victor is no longer competing because it has nothing to do with that, does not kiss him back. He will later. “Later” is something that they have.

Yûri's greatest nightmare of the last decade and more has just become reality, and he is fine.

 

-

 

Victor has looked towards retirement with apprehension for many years. Not since the beginning; the dread only came in his teens, when he looked at his life and realized that there was nothing to it beside figure skating. No human connection that was to outlast his usefulness as an athlete. So without his competitive career there would be nothing left for him. Victor, master of reinventing himself on the ice, was scared of having to redefine himself off it because he didn't know where to start and had nothing and no one to fall back on.

Now he rests his aching leg on a pillow on the couch table and his head on Yûri's shoulder as their movie flickers over the tv screen, and contently marvels over his options. He'll remain a part of the figure skating world for a while longer, as a coach. Maybe forever. Maybe not. It depends on how he feels about it when the time comes, and on what Yûri wants to do.

Maybe, when Yûri retires, Victor can talk him into traveling with him, to see the cities of the world without the pressure of having to compete in them. That's for later, though. For now, physical therapy is going to be a thing, again, between supporting Yûri at the rink and reading all the books on his shelves that he hasn't even gotten around to starting. Skating will still take up a lot of his time, but it won't take all of it. He might just get a hobby.

Maybe he will take up painting, or learn another language, Victor thinks lazily, linking his fingers with Yûri's so that their rings clink softly, the sound drowned out by the tv but the impact resonating through their hands. When his leg is healed he might look into ice dancing again, just for fun. What he takes up next could once again be related to skating, or be any other sport he feels like trying.

It could be cooking, or writing, or music, or art.

It could be anything.

 

 

15 January 2017

**Author's Note:**

> Also contributes to my current [grenprompt-bingo card](http://vail-kagami.dreamwidth.org/13690.html), prompt: _It all depends on this one choice_


End file.
